Microstakes and leanfire rambling

Yesterday I had a swingy session while high on edibles. It started out great, and I'd gone from $930 to $1020, but eventually I got knocked back down to $950. There was one hand where I had 77 and flopped KK7. I bet large on both the flop and turn, with plans to jam river, but the board ran out KK78K and the villain donkjammed 140bb on the river. I don't mind my fold at all, but the guy had AJo, and that has continued to nag at my mind the next day lmao. Almost any other river and I'd eat that spot for breakfast. So annoying.

Today I went from ~$950 to $1061. There wasn't much to speak about in this session, people were spewing as usual. I won a couple of preflop races against shortstacks, but most of today's money was made jamming rivers. I had a 600bb pot where I jammed a boat into trips. Sometimes you just know they probably have trips or an overpair based on how fast they are calling large bets. I love to just overbet jam these spots as an exploit when I've made a sneaky nutted hand.

My big decision now has to do with which tables I should play at. I feel very comfortable in the .05/.10/.20 games I've been playing. I'm buying in with 200bb and 4-tabling, which feels fine, and I don't even blink at getting stacked anymore. If I continue buying in deep at .10/.20/.40, It'll be $40 per table for around 26 buyins. I can either stay at the current stake for another $1000, or start blasting the next stake up. I've done some peeking, and most of the 20NL tables still have like 50/8 fish populating half the seats when I play, so I'm leaning towards moving up.

+$84.80!

This was a decent morning. Woke up, had my coffee, fired up some poker while work was slow.

Tiny session today. Jumped into a new stake at .10/.20/.40. It's 20NL, but 200bb buy-in with a .10 ante and .40 straddle. I fired 4 tables, so that was $160 of buy-ins. These games feel wild, but the table compositions feel about the same as 10NL. I dodged a few value hands in today's session, which I'm actually proud of. There is this energy you pick up on in a pot where the passive guy is suddenly aggressive, and today I dodged a flush and a set while watching others on the table call with worse than what I had. I'm always anti-sweating the regs, so watching them get stacked by the guy playing 60/4 feels great.

I only played about 45 minutes. I had a decent squeeze spot where 50bb of dead money was in the middle while I had queens, but nobody bit, and I just took that down. Also, AA>QT of a fish AIPF. The best hand of the day was KJ > KT on KJT74. Kind of a setup, but we take those.

I was feeling a bit skittish playing a new stake, but got comfortable in a few minutes. After winning a decent little chunk of change, I decided to just end the session. I'm not going to play my 100% A-game all day, and locking in a win is always nice. Planning on another 20NL session tomorrow if I'm feeling good.

+$60.71

Played for about an hour. I fired a mix of the .05/.10/.20 and .10/.20/.40 just based on whatever had a seat open when I was seeking tables. I'll probably just keep doing that for now for convenience. I get annoyed waiting for 7/8's to pop up in the list. I had a couple of cool hands, and I also recognized a reg from another site. My memory isn't 100%, so I'm not putting their name out there or anything, but I'm pretty sure they were a mass-tabling European player on ACR. Surely they properly moved here and aren't trying to cheat me out of my fishy NA dollars lol.

I checked the straddle with Q6o to see a flop in a multiway limped pot, and the board came 66x with clubs. I check, someone bets, someone 3bets, and I jam to stack T6o. We take those. If it happens to be K6/A6 I'll just accept my punishment, and I'm otherwise happy to see all flush draws with overs. I think it's because of the straddle/ante, but limped pots get pretty serious at these tables too lol. I have a couple of similar spots every session where a nothingburger limped pot gets chaotic.

I opened JJ utg, got 3bet to 22bb with 3 more callers, and decided to just flat and see what happens. I do this a lot, where I know I should be squeezing, but I just do the lower-variance thing instead. It feels wrong in a poker sense, but correct for these tables. Anyway, I'm rewarded with J23 rainbow, and villain with A9o unloads 300bb into me by potting the flop and jamming the turn. They had reg stats too, so I think they were just tilted out of their mind in that moment for whatever reason lol. I can't remember if I had any spots with them recently, so I don't think it was an ego thing vs me.

Overall the session was fine. I kinda wish I was playing more volume each day, but sometimes I have a decent result with barely any work and just want to lock it in. I'm averaging around 7k hands/week over the last month on this site, which I guess isn't bad, but I could definitely do a lot more if I were so inclined. Will blast some more tomorrow.

+$28.24

I had a tiring session yesterday and didn't feel like updating. I'm not playing this morning, but I'm just doing a little update here. I fired the .10/.20/.40 tables, and was met with a few really unfortunate situations very quickly. Both KK < AA, AA < JTss (ok dude) were AIPF for 200bb, and there wasn't much I could do about them. I started playing a bit loosey goosey after the fact and was nearly down around $200 at one point, and that's entirely my fault for deviating from my usual grind.

I took a break, rationalized the things that were my fault and weren't my fault, and came back in with a mindset of waiting for the right moments rather than trying to force them into existence. It's the next day, so the particulars of the boards aren't fresh in my memory, but I played fine and grinded back up to the tiny profit I've shown above. Generic stuff like flopping sets, focusing on value, avoiding regs with marginal hands rather than trying to force action, etc.

While sessions like this are expected and totally normal, I have to say it didn't feel good almost being down $200 while at those tables with $40 buyins. I'm seeing how a streak of bad luck or bad play can very quickly blast the bankroll at that stake. I'm not sure if I want to keep focusing on the $40 buyin tables, or if I should drop back down to the $20s until $2k. I could probably get there in less than a month, so maybe the patient approach is better in this case.

-$35.34

Small loss today. Could have been worse, but I sucked out JJ>KK at the end of my session for a decent pot lol.

One of those days where I can't get action when I've got value, but they'll definitely call me with 4th pair when I'm bluffing.

I had a lot of moments that seemed really fortunate, but I couldn't get action to save my life. 22 on AK2 multiway 3bet pot, you'd think I'm printing. Everyone folds on the flop. Several AA/KK pickups where they fold to the 3bet. On this site, that's a bit unusual since people are usually pretty wide; the tables weren't even full of regs or anything. I probably spent $10-15 of this loss chasing flush draws multiway and just whiffing against mediocre hands.

Surely tomorrow the rungood resumes.

+$34.76

Back to a familiar number lol. Session was fine, I played about 1.5 hours and had some back and forth. One hand kind of bothered me and did impact this final result, but none of the spots I encountered were particularly interesting.

I'm dealt AQo, I 3bet pretty big and get one caller. Flop A47. I continue around half pot, they call, and the turn is the Q, giving me two pair. They donk out for 1/3, and I size a raise that makes it easy for them to call a river jam. River comes the T, and they check to me, but I'm not feeling scared of the straight at all because I was assuming you'd have to be some sort of special to commit half your stack with king high and a gutshot on the turn, AND THEN CHECK. Well, I'm not going to say anything mean about the villain, but anyway -$20 😀 I think I'd still play it the same.

Tomorrow, we figure out if we are on to new heights or if we're stuck at $1200. A good chunky session to put me into the $1300s would be nice.

+$85.46

Nice! Played 2 hours, very smooth session. I was a bit card dead for a while, but things started taking off fast. Got max value out of a few flopped sets, called down in a few bluffs I probably shouldn't have made, and stacked my least favorite reg twice :') More happy about that than the money. Today I played the .05/.10/.20 tables with a single .10/.20/.40 mixed in when I wasn't able to find another table mid-session. Surprisingly little action pre-flop for me; I had been dealt KK and AA, and even was 3bet with callers, but everyone folded to the jam each time. Oh well. Still made good money, but I wanted maximum pain.

One thing I consistently struggle with is overfolding in smaller pots. I'm guilty of paying 2bb to reveal hands when I feel like I'm being bluffed, and what I've discovered is I'm bluffed pretty frequently lol. I still feel fine about how cautious I play, but I know I'm leaving money on the table. The aforementioned least favorite reg and me have been battling it out for 5-10k hands or so now, and I've picked up that they use a "small, small, overbet" sizing when they have nothing against me. They've done it a few times, I saw they were bluffs the other times, and today I made one of those middling pair calldowns I cringe at other people making against me. Kablam, thanks for the 120bb. I don't know about fixing my overall game, but I'm starting to learn the ins and outs of the people I'm playing with for sure.

This week overall was good for me. +$ in poker, did fine with work, and my personal life has been pretty zen. This year, I'd like to invest at least another $10-15k into the S&P500 and start doing some dumping of accumulated stuff; I want to be able to spontaneously take a backpack and travel to another country eventually, so freeing myself of random trash is ideal. I'm just making it a point to pick something and get rid of it on trash days, even if its small.

+$50.55

Slow and steady wins the race. Played a mix of the 10NL and 20NL straddle games again, and played less than an hour. AK held against AJ and AQ AIPF, had a couple of really good squeeze spots, and stacked a guy with AQ on KKQK4 when he just started blasting after initially limping garbage pre.

I would play more volume, but I just keep getting given easy spots, and I'm sort of lazy tbh lol. Considering grabbing a Lucid membership to start improving my game, since it looks cheap and I like the idea of doing drills. I saw they support 200bb for cash, so it looks tempting. Today's tiny lil session would already pay for the membership, so it is something to consider when I'm thinking about moving up in stakes again later on.

I think around $2, 000 I'll start full-firing at 20NL, and I'd probably want to stay there until at least $5, 000. We'll get there when we get there, though.

+$20.38

Today was a bit of a drag. I was down $120 at one point, and I had even started a notepad of pain to keep track of unfortunate spots. I didn't want to end the session down money, so I just grinded volume and played another 2 hours.

Dealt 44 on the button, flat, and see 234dd multiway. I 3bet, get jammed on, and get stacked for $40 against A5o. Villain was a bit of a nitty reg, but I just figured I'm ahead of draws, worse sets, and 2ps. Idk. Would call again with enthusiasm.

Dealt 99 UTG, open, get 3bet by a fish, 2 more callers, flop of AQ9. Fish jams flop, turn Q and AQo annihilates me for $27.

Dealt TT on the button, get jammy jammed on by a tilted guy who has gone all in a few hands in a row. Lose to 56ss when the board runs out 789 lol, that's fine, I didn't need that $35.

What I'm happy about though was my mental, which stayed pretty pleasant the whole way through. I'm trying to just roll my eyes and smile when things don't go my way, because I genuinely believe my decisions are fine even if the outcomes aren't. I could just as easily have won all of those pots and had a monster session.

I try to keep a nice environment and consistent routine when I play, too. Wake up, shower, coffee, light a candle, lofi music. The sessions saving grace was when I got dealt AA and slowplayed after getting 3bet by a really aggro reg. The kind of player you can check to OOP and guarantee you're getting value. I don't remember the board runout, but they snapjammed an unpaired AKo on the river and gave me like $45 on the 20NL table.

Anyway maybe we break into the $1400s tomorrow. That'd be nice.

Oh, also, my roommate got invited to some Caesar Rewards casino trip for Harrahs in Biloxi, MS. It's $50 per person for a chartered flight, buses to/from the casino, and free hotel rooms that weekend. Doesn't seem like poker is a focus there, though, so I'm not sure I'll go. I'd just be hoping I don't go broke at blackjack. If I do go, I might expense it out of this bankroll, though. It'll be in April.

Gl dude. feel ya on the fire stuff